ST. PAUL, MN – People who drink wine occasionally may have a lower risk of developing dementia, including Alzheimer's disease, according to a study published in the November 12 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. People who drank wine weekly or monthly were more than two times less likely to develop dementia in the study. "These results don't mean that people should start drinking wine or drink more wine than they usually do," said study author Thomas Truelsen, MD, PhD, of the Institute of Preventive Medicine at Kommunehospitalet in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 2984 - Posted: 06.24.2010

PHILADELPHIA -- Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have averted the onset of neurodegenerative disease in fruit flies by administering medication to flies genetically predisposed to a disorder akin to Parkinson's disease. The result suggests a new approach to the treatment of human disorders including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. Penn biologist Nancy M. Bonini and graduate student Pavan K. Auluck report the finding in the November issue of Nature Medicine. Parkinson's disease is the second most common human neurodegenerative disorder, characterized by tremors, postural rigidity and progressive deterioration of dopaminergic neurons in specific areas of the brain. Despite the evolutionary gulf separating humans and fruit flies, neurotoxicity unfolds in a similar manner in both species. Like humans, Drosophila melanogaster experiences neuronal loss upon expression of alpha-synuclein, a protein implicated in the onset of Parkinson's disease in both species.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 2983 - Posted: 11.12.2002

Associated Press Burton, England — Former England World Cup striker Jeff Astle was renowned as a great header of a soccer ball. He never knew it would kill him. In what could be a groundbreaking decision, a coroner ruled yesterday that Astle died at 59 from a degenerative brain disease caused by the constant heading of a heavy and often wet soccer ball. The former West Bromwich Albion striker, famed for a memorable FA Cup final goal in 1968 and missing an easy chance in a World Cup game against Brazil two years later, died suddenly last January after collapsing at his daughter's home. © 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc.

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 2982 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Smoking pure cannabis is more harmful to lungs than tobacco, a health charity is warning. A study by the British Lung Foundation found that just three cannabis joints a day cause the same damage as 20 cigarettes. And when cannabis and tobacco are smoked together, the effects are dramatically worse. Evidence shows that tar from cannabis cigarettes contains 50% more cancer causing carcinogens than tobacco. Dr Mark Britton, chairman of the British Lung Foundation, said: "These statistics will come as a surprise to many people, especially those who choose to smoke cannabis rather than tobacco in the belief it is safer for them. "It is vital that people are fully aware of the dangers so they can make an educated decision and know the damage they may be causing." (C)BBC

Keyword: Dyslexia
Link ID: 2981 - Posted: 11.11.2002

By N. R. KLEINFIELD It happens when she forgets. It could be a phone number. It could be an appointment. She might be about to introduce someone — someone she knows very well — and the name will totally elude her: "And this is . . . uh . . . uh. . . ." The fear will crest from some corner of Barbara Waldon's self. She will think with a certain foreboding: Is this the sign? Have I got it? Is my mind going? She is 65. Few people get dementia that young, and her sporadic memory lapses don't necessarily signify much. But still. Her mother had Alzheimer's disease, the dominant cause of dementia, and she saw it unspool in her. Early on, her mother kept notebooks of pertinent information, even dialogue from her husband. Then if he would say to her, "I already told you that," she would riffle through her notebooks to see if in fact he had. Eventually, she would neglect to turn the stove off, and later she would be unable to cook. One day, she left her home in her bathrobe and walked seven miles and could not say where she lived. Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 2980 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Protein cocktail persuades stem-cell grafts to become neurons. MICHAEL STEBBINS A simple protein shake coaxes human neural stem cells from fetuses to develop into proper neurons when implanted into live animals' brain or spinal cord. The technique jumps an important hurdle on the path to stem-cell therapies. To fix neurodegenerative diseases and repair spinal-cord injuries, new neurons must grow in the place of the damaged ones. Unfortunately, most engrafted neural stem cells either don't develop, or turn into support cells rather than neurons, even though they have the potential to grow into any type of cell. "We used proteins involved in the development of neurons to point them in the right direction before they are engrafted," says team member Ping Wu of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. "So what is happening to the cells is natural for them." © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002

Keyword: Regeneration; Stem Cells
Link ID: 2979 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Processing speed plays role in intelligence WASHINGTON -- Although individuals vary widely, on average, pre-term infants are markedly slower at processing information -- including understanding what they see -- than full-term infants. New research shows this deficit in processing speed is already present in the first year of life and the gap in performance does not narrow with age. The research is published in the November issue of Developmental Psychology, a journal of the American Psychological Association (APA). Many of the tasks thought to depend on processing speed are the same ones in which many pre-term infants perform poorly when older, including measures of intelligence, language and academic achievement, such as reading, arithmetic and spelling. Among pre-terms, slower processing speed is also associated with greater medical risk, such as respiratory distress syndrome. To explore whether individual differences in processing speed have their roots in infancy, Susan A. Rose, Ph.D., Judith F. Feldman, Ph.D., and Jeffery J. Jankowski, Ph.D., of Albert Einstein College of Medicine - Children's Hospital at Montefiore studied 153 full-term and 59 pre-term infants (born weighing less than four pounds) to assess processing speed at five, seven and 12 months of age. The infants were presented with a series of pictures of paired faces, one that remained the same across the trials and one that changed. The trials continued until an infant showed a consistent preference for the new faces.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 2978 - Posted: 11.11.2002

The brains of adolescents are far more sensitive to the addictive effects of drugs, experiments on mice suggest. And the researchers, from Jefferson Medical College in the US, believe that the effect may be the same in human teenagers. The scientists used cocaine and amphetamines in their experiments. They found that a certain protein was produced in a part of the brain called the striatum when both adults and adolescents were exposed to these drugs on a regular basis. While they are not sure exactly what this protein is for, they believe it is part of the 'adaptation' process that programmes long-term responses - including addiction - to drugs. They found that the quantity of this protein produced was higher in the adolescent striatum compared to either the striatum of adult or newborn mice. (C) BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 2977 - Posted: 11.10.2002

By ARTHUR ALLEN Neal Halsey's life was dedicated to promoting vaccination. In June 1999, the Johns Hopkins pediatrician and scholar had completed a decade of service on the influential committees that decide which inoculations will be jabbed into the arms and thighs and buttocks of eight million American children each year. At the urging of Halsey and others, the number of vaccines mandated for children under 2 in the 90's soared to 20, from 8. Kids were healthier for it, according to him. These simple, safe injections against hepatitis B and germs like haemophilus bacteria would help thousands grow up free of diseases like meningitis and liver cancer. Halsey's view, however, was not shared by a small but vocal faction of parents who questioned whether all these shots did more harm than good. While many of the childhood infections that vaccines were designed to prevent -- among them diphtheria, mumps, chickenpox and polio -- seemed to be either antique or innocuous, serious chronic diseases like asthma, juvenile diabetes and autism were on the rise. And on the Internet, especially, a growing number of self-styled health activists blamed vaccines for these increases. Like all medical interventions, vaccines sometimes cause adverse reactions. But unlike pills, vaccines come packaged with high expectations, which make them particularly vulnerable to public criticism. Vaccines don't cure people, and they are administered to healthy children, which gives them few opportunities for good press. When they work, nothing happens. When vaccinated children become ill, their parents are grief-stricken and often enraged, even if vaccines aren't proved to be at fault. All of this puts public-health advocates like Halsey on the defensive. Most attacks on vaccines, they say, are based on hysteria, bad science and dubious politics. Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 2976 - Posted: 11.10.2002

By MICHAEL POLLAN The first time I opened Peter Singer's ''Animal Liberation,'' I was dining alone at the Palm, trying to enjoy a rib-eye steak cooked medium-rare. If this sounds like a good recipe for cognitive dissonance (if not indigestion), that was sort of the idea. Preposterous as it might seem, to supporters of animal rights, what I was doing was tantamount to reading ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' on a plantation in the Deep South in 1852. Singer and the swelling ranks of his followers ask us to imagine a future in which people will look back on my meal, and this steakhouse, as relics of an equally backward age. Eating animals, wearing animals, experimenting on animals, killing animals for sport: all these practices, so resolutely normal to us, will be seen as the barbarities they are, and we will come to view ''speciesism'' -- a neologism I had encountered before only in jokes -- as a form of discrimination as indefensible as racism or anti-Semitism. Even in 1975, when ''Animal Liberation'' was first published, Singer, an Australian philosopher now teaching at Princeton, was confident that he had the wind of history at his back. The recent civil rights past was prologue, as one liberation movement followed on the heels of another. Slowly but surely, the white man's circle of moral consideration was expanded to admit first blacks, then women, then homosexuals. In each case, a group once thought to be so different from the prevailing ''we'' as to be undeserving of civil rights was, after a struggle, admitted to the club. Now it was animals' turn. Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 2975 - Posted: 11.10.2002

Motherhood may trigger changes in the brain Having children makes women more clever and protects against dementia later in life, a study suggests. Researchers in the United States believe motherhood triggers positive changes in the brain. A study on rats found those with two or more litters of pups did significantly better in memory and skill tests compared to those without offspring. Subsequent tests also revealed that their brains had changed and may reduce their chances of developing diseases like Alzheimer's. Professor Craig Kinsley, of the University of Richmond in Virginia, said his findings would probably apply to humans too. His team carried out their research on three different groups of female rats - the first had never given birth, the second had one litter of pups and the third had two litters. (C) BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers; Intelligence
Link ID: 2974 - Posted: 11.09.2002

ORLANDO, FLORIDA--In an odd case study presented here 6 November at the Society for Neuroscience meeting, a man blind in part of his visual field can have partial sight there--as long as his hand is in the blind area. The man might owe his ability to neurons, similar to ones known in monkeys, that react to both vision and touch. The find indicates that humans have the same multitalented neurons, and it might lead to the development of compensatory strategies for some forms of blindness. Until about 20 years ago, researchers thought that most sensory neurons are assigned fairly specific tasks. Neurons in the primary visual cortex, for example, receive and process signals from the eyes; those in the auditory cortex react to sound. But since then, researchers have found so-called bimodal neurons that respond to two senses. Some of these, well studied in primates, are sensitive to being touched on the hand as well as seeing things within several centimeters of the same hand. This literature came in handy when psychologists Krista Schendel and Lynn Robertson of the University of California, Berkeley, met "WM." He'd suffered a stroke in his right primary visual cortex and couldn't see anything to his left. But he mentioned that he did better on standard ophthalmological tests when his hand was in his blind area. Copyright © 2002 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 2973 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Anemia drug also protects against nerve damage Damaris Christensen Reduce, reuse, recycle. Most people are better at recycling their trash than at either reducing or reusing it. But the idea of turning old products to new uses has a long history—and drug companies are now benefiting from the approach. Testing the safety of drugs in people takes years and can cost millions of dollars. However, research often suggests novel uses for drugs that have been on the market for years. One of the most recent additions to the list of old drugs with new possible uses is a hormone called erythropoietin, or EPO. It's been used for about a decade to treat anemia in people and, less openly, to boost endurance in athletes. Now, laboratory studies and preliminary trials in people indicate that EPO may be useful in treating nerve damage caused by stroke and spinal cord injuries. The drug speeds formation of iron- and oxygen-carrying red blood cells. The body naturally increases its production of EPO to compensate for a shortage of oxygen, whether from high altitudes, breathing problems during sleep, or lung disease. Doctors use EPO to treat people suffering from anemia, a condition in which patients have fewer red blood cells than normal. Athletes use EPO because extra red blood cells can carry additional oxygen to hard-working muscles during exercise. From Science News, Vol. 162, No. 19, Nov. 9, 2002, p. 296. Copyright ©2002 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 2972 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Day 5: Thursday Nov 7th, 2002 Marijuana on the mind Investigators: Daniele Piomelli, Roger Nicoll and Wade Regehr New research presented here gives insight into unusual mechanisms behind the signals that marijuana-like compounds called cannabinoids send between neurons in the brain. They use a sort of backwards signal system that may be involved in fine-tuning neural networks used in learning and memory. First clues to the riddle of neuron fate Investigator: Jane Johnson Conceptually, researchers have known since the 1980s that transcription factors control cell identity. Now, they are learning the exact regulatory pathways that determine why one cell takes on the fate of a particular neuron in the dorsal region of the developing spinal cord rather than that in a neighboring cell.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 2971 - Posted: 11.09.2002

BERLIN, Germany -- Prosecutors in Germany are investigating a claim that the brain of urban guerrilla Ulrike Meinhof was removed after her death and examined to find a reason for her violent behaviour. Meinhof was a leader of the extreme-left Baader-Meinhof Gang which waged a campaign of killings, bombings and kidnappings against the establishment in the 1970s. She hanged herself in prison in 1976. © 2002 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 2970 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Kathleen Fackelmann, USA TODAY Researchers report finding a way to short-circuit feelings of panic in rats, according to a study out today. If they can do the same for humans, the discovery may lead to better therapies for anxiety disorders that have been running rampant after the sniper shootings and 9/11 terrorist attacks. In any given year, about 5 million people in the USA will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, a psychiatric condition triggered by living through or witnessing a traumatic event. Some experts feel people can suffer PTSD symptoms after repeatedly watching traumatic events on television. People with PTSD suffer flashbacks, nightmares and feelings of terror — long after the danger has vanished. Gregory Quirk and Mohammed Milad of the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico wanted to find the brain region that quells that panic. © Copyright 2002 USA TODAY

Keyword: Stress; Emotions
Link ID: 2969 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Day 4: Wednesday Nov 6th, 2002 Researchers sniff out the genes behind mate recognition Investigator: Catherine Dulac It's been a year of surprises for pheromone research. The latest: pheromone receptors express unique immune molecules that may be key to recognizing the chemicals. Maybe I'll just eat one more... Investigators: Ann Kelley and Randy Seeley It may come halfway through that bag of potato chips: the contradictory feelings of being full but wanting to eat more anyway. Scientists believe they have identified some of the brain circuits that make eating so pleasurable, and sometimes so hard to stop. Counting on circadian rhythms Investigators: Amita Sehgal, Paul Taghert and Michael Nitabach Building on the identification of the biological processes that allow circadian clocks to keep time, scientists are teasing out how signals from these biological clocks are sent through the body and result in daily patterns of activity such as waking and sleeping. Early evidence says aging does not alter gene expression Investigator: Jean Cadet Animals and humans alike suffer memory, learning, and motor deficits as they age. But researchers said today that, whatever else is causing the decline, they don't see wide-scale alterations in gene expression. Gene therapy works late, in lysosomal storage diseases Investigator: Beverly Davidson Delivering missing genes to the brain can reverse the symptoms of some neurological diseases, even much after disease onset, according to new results presented today. Treating the many facets of schizophrenia Investigators: Arvid Carlsson and Herbert Meltzer Schizophrenia has one name but many symptoms. It may be misguided to expect one drug to treat them all, speakers suggested today. Two new treatments under testing demonstrate the potential of addressing behavioral and cognitive components separately.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 2968 - Posted: 11.08.2002

Crayfish alien to British waters are being lured into traps using sex chemicals. Underwater baskets have been laced with natural pheromones produced by the creatures to attract a mate. UK scientists are using the bait in a conservation exercise to catch North American signal crayfish. The larger, more aggressive species is regarded as a threat to the native British crayfish. It is under threat from pollution, habitat loss and competition from its trans-Atlantic cousin. Researchers are discussing the first results of the scheme at an international conference in Nottingham. (C) BBC

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 2967 - Posted: 11.08.2002

NewScientist.com news service Just two glasses of wine can ruin your brain's ability to detect its own errors, and to correct them. The finding helps explain why alcohol so severely impairs driving ability, and casts new light on the basic action of the drug on the brain, says a Dutch team. "We all know on a subjective level what alcohol does - we lose control a little bit, we become more error-prone. But this research gives a new perspective on how alcohol has these effects," researcher Richard Ridderinkhof of the University of Amsterdam told New Scientist. Ridderinkhof's team studied people performing a lab task designed to generate a high proportion of errors. They found that alcohol had a significant effect on activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a region known to be involved in detecting errors and in signalling a need to adjust performance after an error. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 2966 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Aim at the mind to tackle obesity, say neuroscientists. HELEN PEARSON Targeting emotions could help in the battle against obesity, says a US scientist. Her new study shows that blocking the brain's pleasure centres stops mice gorging on fat. Many obesity researchers focus on how the body's fuel and fat levels control appetite. But as comfort eaters know, habits and desires often override metabolic need. In this latest study, mice injected with reward chemicals called opioids ate up to six times the normal amount of pure fat. It's like the warm glow felt by a person savouring a white-chocolate cheesecake, Ann Kelley of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School told the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002

Keyword: Emotions; Obesity
Link ID: 2965 - Posted: 06.24.2010